


I Want You to Know I'm Scared out my Crooked Soul

by oppressa



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Killing
Genre: Codependency, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Mild Smut, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 10:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1895874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppressa/pseuds/oppressa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah sometimes frightens Stephen, though he needs her like breathing.</p><p>[Updated but still peddling the old season fic as I haven't finished S4 yet! So no spoilers.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Witch

**Author's Note:**

> Some more HDM x-overs. It means a lot to me anyone reads these, so thank you and I hope you enjoy them :)
> 
> Beta-read by the lovely Lilysmum.
> 
> Main title credit: Aesop Rock.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah's daemon can fly further away from her than most people's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fic about the (perceived) peculiarities of Sarah and her [daemon](http://www.askbud.ca/osprey2.jpg).

The first time she disconcerts him is in the park where they're looking for a body. He stops short in front of her and his eyes widen. “Where is he? Your daemon?”

She raises her gaze to the sky, where Dras is circling just above the tallest trees, searching the wider area. He looks up and bites his lip at the height of it, at the sheer distance between her and the bird he can still distinguish as hers.

“Don't it hurt?” He asks, transparently.

“Yes.” She says. “You've never tried it? Tested your bond to its limit?”

He shudders visibly, and turns back to check on his wary, wiry hyena, who she likes better than him so far, rooting around in the dirt behind him.

“Me and her, we stick together, you know, like a team. That mean anythin' to you?”

She doesn't dignify his inane questions with an answer this time. She knows what people mutter behind her back, that it's unnatural, that they've been separated, her and Dras, because she's so ambitious, she's a witch.

He plummets down at speed, which gratifyingly makes the arrogant young man take a step back.

“Found something.” He relays. “You saw those people with fishing poles. There's a lake, on the far side of the park.”

“I thought so.” She murmurs, stroking the crest of his feathers, resisting the urge to throw a smug glance at her partner. “Good work. You show us.”

He takes off again and Holder makes that scoffing noise he often does at something he doesn't like, but he comes with them. Sephronia follows, so close to him it's a wonder he doesn't trip over her, though he never does, so they're also coordinated in a sense. She'll give them credit for that, at least.


	2. Misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was them against the world, until Linden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place post-"My Lucky Day": Holder's [daemon](http://www.wildlife-pictures-online.com/hyena_knp-a7893.html) is more optimistic about their future than he is.

He slams the door behind them, which makes her jump and let out a burst of nervous laughter, but she can't help that. She circles him sitting on the kitchen floor before she thinks it's safe, he won't kick her away.

“You should've killed him.” She growls, about Gil. “And I'd have taken care of that crazy cobra bitch of his if you'd let me.”

He shakes his head, turns away from her, presses his forehead to the wall. “They saved us. Why?”

“Because we were worth saving. We _are_.” Her paws press against his knees, then her front legs come up to lie on his thighs. Normally she's constantly in motion, and she'd been frantic outside Linden's apartment, tried to break their partners' hearts with some truly pitiful whining. Now she stays down with him for a long time, past the point his own legs have started to cramp. 

He keeps thinking, how could they let Linden know they had no idea the photo was a fake? She'd said nothing while he'd been pleading, didn't even tell him to go away. She isn't just going to magically pick up the phone if he calls her tomorrow.

“Come on.” He mutters, getting up, having come to no obvious conclusion. _Maybe some things, they just stay broke_ , oh Jesus. Why did he have to go and say that, even if he believes it?

 

That night his daemon sleeps with him like she hasn't since they were about thirteen years old and he holds her, fingers stroking the longer, coarse hair that grows down the back of her neck. She settled early because she always knew what she was. Liz freaked out at her final form at first, gathering her twitchy little hare up in her arms asking if they were for real. But they won her around eventually.

Then everything was fine for a while, till he picked up an addiction that made her coat all mangy, gave him a self-conscious slouch and a bad reputation he's only proving to be accurate.

She nudges his tear-streaked cheeks with her nose in the dark. “She'll come around.” She tells him. “She will. Sarah's a good person.”

“Stop _calling_ her that.” He hisses in a whisper. Linden is one of the good ones, it's true, but what Seph said implies he's not, that he cuts corners and doesn't question, just takes his payouts and will always be a tweakhead.

“Fine. Be a dick to me.” She flicks her tail in his face as she scrambles off the bed and he misses her immediately, her warmth, the feel of her fur. He can't call her back now, though. He doesn't deserve comfort. Doesn't deserve her.


	3. Visiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They should've been there for them.

Holder's pale even against the sheets in the hospital bed, hooked up to a tube, lying far too still. His face is a little bruised and cut, but she can't see the _real_ damage – his stomach is swathed in bandages, and it makes her wince to think about it. 

Beside him, Seph's thin chest rises and falls with a painful effort. Sarah clutches Dras so hard in a protective reflex he nips her hand. The hyena's ears were torn by the tribe's coyote daemons, there are bites on her hind-legs, along her spine. She was too strong for them though, bigger and sinewy and tough. They'll both pull through okay.

She sits in the visitor's chair for so long her legs are starting to go numb. Just before she gets up to come back another time with Dras in tow, her partner stirs, rolling sick-looking dark eyes around the room till they rest on her. 

“Linden.” He says, and she can't leave then.

“How do you feel?” She asks, in the absence of anything else to say.

He blinks slowly, like it's an effort to hold his lids open, to focus, and murmurs, “Like shit.”

Seph nestles closer against his neck and mumbles something private that makes him crack a vague smile.

“How're you Sarrrah?” Holder slurs her first name, and she thinks that's the morphine talking. “How's little man?”

“He's great.” She lies. “Jack's great, he's worried about you though.”

“Well tell him not to...not...” His eyes close, and his head drops back down what little distance he'd managed to lift it from the pillow. When he speaks again it's with more strength but no greater clarity.

“I had a nightmare Bobby shot Dras out of the air, and you just dropped in front of me, so don't...” He reaches blindly for her hand, and she catches his, squeezes it. It feels strangely intimate, they never as much as shook hands. “Don't go away, okay?”

Adrastos shifts on her shoulder, his head flicking quickly from side to side like _no, no, not ever_. No matter what happens, they're not going out like that.

“I won't.” She says firmly in response to Holder, thoroughly disturbed but of course they'll stay if they're needed, of course. He's already breathing heavier, his grip on her hand relaxing. Seph smiles at Sarah apologetically the second before she follows him back to sleep.


	4. Splitting Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Splitting up is just the worst. Or the best. Whatever.

They're on the stairs when they hear her scream. Seph is in a dead sprint before he is, back the way they came. She's faster and her running ahead causes the burn in his heart, but this is Linden, they can take a little pain for her as has been proved before. By the time he's down tangling with Mills, she's already locked jaws with his wolverine daemon. Dras is fluttering around like crazy, blood on his beak like he tried to peck the skunkbear's eyes out, and Linden is, shit, on the floor with it all over her face.

It takes everything to pull himself off the bastard when he gives up and lies still, when Mills' daemon submits to the collaborative attack of his and Linden's.

“Piece of _trash_.” Dras flaps his wings disdainfully in Mills' face, and returns to her.

He reaches to wrap his hand around Seph's bone-splintering jaw, like _no more_. It's Linden's turn. She's gotten up now, and oh her expression, so enraged, god it turns him on. He feels every kick in Mills' stomach like a shot of raw lust to his own gut. Seph is gonna start chasing her own tail any second. A couple more and he tells Linden it's enough, under the pretence they can't go much further without being reprimanded for using undue force.

She's breathing hard as he pulls the cuffs out of his pocket and so is he, possibly for a different reason though. The way he's lying directly over Mills might be giving away his hard-on, but he doesn't care, let him feel it. Just as long as Linden doesn't see. He looks over at her from under his eyelashes. She's cradling Dras now and she seems exhausted but with this connection he senses between them at least Stephen knows they're thinking the same thing: _we got the son of a bitch this time, all right_.


	5. Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holder won't take no for an answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linden takes up Holder's offer of staying at his place when he finds out she's going back to the hotel/ sleeping in her car. This last one's maybe rated more Mature.

She ducks under his arm holding the door open as Dras flies in overhead and then stands in what passes for the hallway, reluctant to let her bags touch the floor in this new refuge. Well, not new, but it was always a strange place when they were young, they never settled in that sense.

“Just put 'em there for now.” He says, and Seph turns in dizzying circles in front of the table he nodded at, clearly very excited to have them here.

She doesn't have a lot with her, and it's all in grocery store carriers, so embarrassing. Holder doesn't even think that way. He'd helped her with them from the car though that wasn't necessary. He pulls off his jacket, throws himself on the couch, turns on the TV.

“What're you waitin' for, make yourselves at home.” He pats the seat next to him. “Mi casa es su casa and all that.”

“It's _our_ house.” Seph says, so much more talkative around her now. “But you _are_ welcome.”

“Thanks.” She says drily, sitting down. Very aware of the space between them. Aware of Seph's restlessness, rolling herself around down there, at their feet. Aware of Dras, having an anxious pecking frenzy at the stones and foliage in Holder's rock garden, and of the silence that has stretched out for several minutes.

“You want a cigarette?” He asks, after a while. She shakes her head, stiffly. She shouldn't have come. Shouldn't have given in. This was such a bad idea... She tries to concentrate on the television. What are they even watching? She doesn't know. He flicks it off and oh god, here it comes.

“Why you being so quiet? I mean, we're like, partners, right? Friends...” It seems he feels awkward saying it in all seriousness.

“No,” she says. “We're not,” and his mouth twists, taking it as her saying he overstepped the mark even with that. 

She takes a deep breath and says, “I feel we've been more than that for quite a while.”

Seph's ears twitch, though she stays dead still. Her eyes flick between them like she's watching a pendulum sway.

“Linden, I didn't ask you here because I wanted _sex_ , if that's what you think...”

Seph gets up, sidles over to her, tugs on the bottom of her jean leg with her teeth.

“He does, though.” She whispers, conspiratorially. “I mean he didn't, but he does.”

Holder's still going on, his elbows rested on his knees, forehead on the heel of one hand. “It's like, I respect you, Sarah, okay? And I'd trust you and Dras with our lives...”

“How is this gonna change that?” She interrupts, suddenly, and he looks up at her, surprised. His eyes cast around for an answer he can't find, and come to rest on Adrastos' shadow on the wall.

“Ain't he telling you it's a bad idea?”

Dras can't soften the harshness in the sound of his laughter but it's a good natured laugh – and that settles that.

“Not anymore.” She says gently.

His first move is to put his hand on her leg that's nearest him, rubbing it up and down, in and out between her thighs. She lets him do what he wants, move his long fingers to skim her stomach, then hook in to her waistband, large palm pressing heavily against her. She kisses him in response to him leaning in the way he seems to have wanted for a long time. 

“Is that okay?” He asks, squeezing her crotch between their mouths meeting.

“Holder.” She presses her thighs tight against his hand down there. “Everything's okay.”

He moves up over her, using his weight to push her down on to the couch, snagging the band of her panties underneath her jeans before he unzips her and tugs them down. Her head rests on the edge of the couch and she stretches out her legs to give him space for his whole body to lie on her, all six foot something of it.

A high-pitched fit of giggling startles her and she glances around to see Holder's daemon on her back, rump on the carpet, bearing her sensitive belly. Dras' retracted talons forcing her hindquarters down. She's more obviously tactile than he is – she strengthens Holder's ties with people like that – she always played with Jack's as-yet-unsettled daemon Adara, much more than Dras. But he has his massive wings that can reach out and envelop her, practically.

Holder, used to Seph's not-necessarily amused hysterics, whispers to ignore her, _she's getting hers._

His technique is simple but fairly deft, rough thumbing combined with some slightly more skilful ministrations. She was pretty turned-on before and now it's mounting, she's pushing back down on his fingers, getting slick. The barest brush against where she's especially sensitive and she's arching up. She doesn't need to tell him anything - he's hitting her there again and again.

Her eyelids are fluttering, but she can feel his other hand sneaking up under her sweater and in the end she lifts it for him, just lets him see what she's got without any suspense. He's too preoccupied getting her off to play with them properly. He slips his hand under one of the cups, fastens his teeth around the bra-strap of the other and drags it down her shoulder, runs his nose over the curve of her breast. The light scruff of his goatee is so fine on her skin it hardly scratches at all. He sucks at her nipple and a frisson goes right through her.

She's panting, Adrastos' keening calls giving it away as she climaxes silently, and turns her head to the side. Holder keeps working her, till she's all gone, till she touches his wrist and takes it away.

“Told ya you can come and crash, Sarah.” He laughs in her ear, and ugh, she wants to hit him for that, but she has done, so it's not like she can complain. She fastens her arms around his shoulders. “Want to get in bed, I could make you come some more?”

She sees right through him. “So you could, you mean.” She says, sliding a hand down between them to where he's digging into her and making him buck against it, the extra pressure. “Yeah, we'll get to that. To you.”

“That's good, I mean, seein' as you got me all wet.” He licks his fingers and kisses her again with it in his mouth, the taste of cigarettes as well, and then she suddenly does wants one. _If_ she's gonna live with Holder, she may as well start the inevitable descent now.

Her daemon feels content but she knows Holder's is as impatient as he is. She comes to _Sarah_ for attention, though, and she obliges, cupping her weirdly-sweet face as Holder reaches for the pack on the table, tapping out a smoke.

“Share.” He tells her, holding it to her lips. “It'll be gone faster.”

She rolls her eyes, accepting it, and bends her head to the lighter.


	6. coda 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holder's reaction to seeing Linden without her daemon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added some companion pieces to the previous chapters, hope that's not too much more-of-the-same. Thank you to melynichy and LibasaurusRex for letting me know they'd like this to continue :) And thanks to everyone who's read/ left kudos too, I really appreciate it.

If she wanted to shock him, she did. She looked for a minute like she didn't have a daemon, of all the screwed-up things. Took a lot not to barf up in front of her, like what the fuck. Although in a way it had been like he was the one offending her, stumbling into this strange, almost mystical thing with his knee-jerk assumptions. But he has had it with the enchanted forest. And with Linden. And her erstwhile bird daemon who hasn't said one word to Seph. He knows they were put undercover to blend in with the addicts and scumbags, due to her appearance as much as his, but they ain't that unsavoury, really. She trots alongside him like a constant shadow. He couldn't ever send her away from him like Linden does her feathered fiend. It'd result in some sort of trauma and eventual death, for both of them, he's sure. He won't touch her now though. That's what Linden wants, to see them as weak.

“Hurry up.” She calls, crooking her hand at them without turning around.

Seph looks up at him, and he nods for her to go on ahead a little. They can do it, after all, she can be at least fifteen feet away before it starts to hurt. In another room, sometimes, though that does feel weird.

The lake is low-down, and she sees it before he does, flicking her neck and racing back.

“Stephen, I hate to tell you this.” She says. “But they were right.”

Jesus. The last thing he needs is her thinking Linden's some kind of genius, as well.

“It don't mean the girl's in there.” She reminds him.

“You'd hope not.” He says. They've seen some shit in their time, but he ain't a hard-nosed homicide investigator yet, it affects him. Though he'd never admit that to Linden. She is striding towards the water like she actually wants to find a drowned corpse. He is _not_ going to let her throw him off.

 


	7. coda 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Linden needs some assurance before she forgives.

“We're sorry.” Seph is in the back, saying it for him. “We're really sorry.” She looks it – her eyes are so round the whites are showing. Holder himself is in darkness, looking out the window so she can only see the plane of his cheekbone and the nub of his nose, watching Dras rake parking lot gravel with his claws. Adrastos doesn't like being in the car, doesn't like the feeling of containment. He didn't want to have to listen to this either. Holder would probably like to be out there with him, but tough. She's not talking it out with just his daemon.

“I know.” She says, as tolerantly as she can. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

The animal bows her head, ashamed, but there's also anger in her voice. “We went to our friend at county, the one that gave us the photograph.”

“You mean Gil Sloane.” She pre-empts, as everything falls into place. Their _friend_ , yes. Someone they trusted. Someone they'd have taken and passed on that photograph from without stopping to authenticate it.

The seat creaks next to her, as Holder's body tenses, his head snaps around. He's on edge at the very mention of the name. “How d'you know him?”

God. As if she's out to get him too. She stares at him, not quite cold but not softly, either. “I don't. I know he was your supervisor, and your NA sponsor, and that he's pretty powerful in county. That he sold you out.”

“You been spying on us _again_ , Linden? What's it gonna take to prove to you--”

“You're damn well lucky I did.”

Holder mumbles something that sounds like an incredibly passive-aggressive “Fuck you,” and gets out, startling Dras, starts pacing back and forth in front of the windscreen. Seph whines, caught between whether to go after her beloved Stephen or to stay and explain. Sarah pushes down the window.

“If you take me to that backpack.” She calls, “I won't put in the word you transfer back to county so you can see him there every day for the rest of your short career. Or would you rather see him than me?”

His shoulders drop, and she watches him fumble for his cigarettes, waits while he lights one and blows out the smoke in a shuddering breath. Wow, she can be such a jerk in her frustration. She remembers he spent that whole day looking for Jack with her; why would he have done that if he wasn't a hundred percent genuine – just to earn her trust? No. He would've found some excuse to sneak off at some point.

“Get back in.” She says, a little less harsh. A lot less, in fact. “It's cold out there.”

He wanders back, all nonchalant, and sits there still not looking at her, but not so obviously turned away with the nicotine working. He hangs his smoking hand outside as a gesture, laying the other on Seph's head to steady her, steady himself. “It's in my car.” He whispers, tilting his neck into the cushioned restraint. His eyes are down on her hands, her lap. “Box in the trunk.”

She flicks her fingers at Dras in their signal they're gonna go, and sticks the key in the ignition. “All right. Direct me from here.”

 


	8. coda 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holder's point of view in the hospital.

When he opens his eyes he's inside, and the cold has gone, though his clothes have been replaced by a scratchy hospital gown. There's something he needs to remember, he needs his jacket, but Linden is sitting by the bed, and seeing her face blows everything else away. He gets the sense she's wasted several case-working hours here with them, something she'd never normally do, which sort of worries him even more than his current situation.

“How do you feel?” She asks, and it takes a moment to process.

He can't feel an awful lot of himself, actually, except a dull ache around his ribs. He doesn't really want to categorise it all right now. Most of all he feels grateful and slightly overwhelmed that she's here at the expense of the case. Pleased, though. Definitely pleased. Almost warm. He bets he _looks_ like shit, though, so that's what he tells her. Not as haggard as in the tweaker days of not-so-long-ago, maybe, yet certainly as bad as she's ever seen him.

“Tell her how we _really_ feel, Stephen.” Seph whispers in his ear, and he smiles, revelling in the press of her against him. Being dragged apart by the Indians hurt worse than being beaten, sucked the strength right out of him. It wouldn't have mattered to Linden, her and Dras are tougher than them like that. And they'd have had to catch Dras first.

He remembers arguing before everything went to shit. About her well-being, about Jack's. A lot of it wasn't his place to say. So he just asks how the kid is, no accusation in his tone. He's not sure he could sound anything except high right now. He never wanted to talk to Linden stoned off his gourd, thinks about asking her to pull out the thing in his wrist, but before he can, that fucked-up dream comes back and shatters him. He shouldn't tell her what he thought had happened, but it forces its way out, he needs to hold her to know for sure it didn't.

He barely feels her clasp his hand. It's good she took it though. The last thing he hears is her promising not to leave. At least he can go back to sleep in peace.

 


	9. coda 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Linden's perspective of arresting Mills.

Dras squawks from around the corner and veers back, but he's too late. Joe Mills barrels into her, knocking her down. Her gun's gone flying, still she doesn't give him a chance to get it, grabbing hold of his hair and wrenching as he goes for her throat.

Mills is compact but he's stronger than he looks. His daemon, she can't even see what it is, a stocky, muscular, low-to-the-ground animal, attacks Dras, tearing at his delicate feathers. He's driven into a frenzy to protect her, putting up a good fight but together they're losing.

“Holder!” She screams. She can hardly get Mills off her long enough to call out. He busts her mouth, she feels the blood springing up but she has to keep him with her so he doesn't become even more dangerous. She wonders fuzzily if this is how Dannette felt and if Joe meant to finish her, whether he'll finish them.

Seph bounds in, a blur of greyish sandy fur and hooked teeth, trying to suffocate the other daemon. _Wolverine_ , she thinks, unconnected to anything, _it's a wolverine_. Holder arrives two seconds later, slamming into Mills and pinning him the way she'd been pinned.

When she gets up, he's been punched into submission, but she wants to hurt him even more, make him _bleed_ like she is. Holder extricates himself slightly to make it easier, and she swings her boot into Mills' stomach, four, five times, possibly more. Till she sees her partner's expression change from fully supportive to maybe even slightly intimidated, and that snaps her out of it. She didn't think she'd be able to alienate him, any more, and she never, ever wants to, so she stops.

She backs away from Holder on Mills' prone form, pushing his lean body in, even his- oh god- crotch. Probably just adding insult to injury but she should not be noticing that. And how rough he is as he cuffs him as well, their tangled limbs still jostling for control. Her blood's all rushed to her head and she has to look away, look for Adrastos to calm her down.

She picks him up carefully, her hollow-boned bird, fingers gently checking if he's been damaged at all. If he had it would be another reason to hate the rapist trash at her feet. But he seems okay, just lightly gored along one side, _under_ his wing, thank god. If he couldn't fly, he would go crazy. They both would.

 


	10. coda 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holder gives into curiosity about Linden's abilities.

She was more adventurous than he expected. He'd always wanted more than just to get his cock in Linden, and he got it. Her hand hovered over him a little cautiously at first but when he moved his hips up this steely determination came into her eyes and she'd squeezed him, run her tongue around, and he'd held his breath until he ran out of air. He's outta practice, some of his thrusts were seriously clumsy, however, she didn't seem to care. He already wants her again, but Seph has crept in and draped herself over the small yet perfectly formed body beside him. She loves Linden's touch, and he ain't getting in there again till she lets him.

It's sort of awesome to walk into the hall and see the large, rangy bird of prey casually sitting at the window looking onto the street. Seph is beautiful, to him, although he knows other people don't feel the same way. Dras, on the other hand, is frigging majestic, or whatever, especially when gliding on those big dark wings. He always wants to be in the air.

Stephen goes to him and opens the latch, careful of his hands near the talons, expecting him to fly out, but just like Linden he confounds expectations, staying perched on the sill.

“Yo, birdbrain.” He says, feebly. He's still wary of getting his hands, his _face_ slashed by that fierce beak/claws combination. “Are we cool?”

The Osprey ruffles his feathers, shuffles his feet. “You're most annoying, Holder, do you know that?”

“Yeah, but you like it! She likes it, so you do too.”

Dras makes that cawing-screeching noise he's learnt to identify as amusement by now. “Yes, so it would be a shame if you put a foot wrong.”

“I won't.” He says quickly. He almost grins at the thought of himself as some lovesick puppy, then straightens his face. This is the most either him or Seph has gotten out of Linden's daemon ever, and he wants to keep it going.

“So...how come you can go so far away from her?”

He thinks Dras will tell him to mind his own business. Instead he looks pleased to be asked. “Practice. Extending the link. You could do it with Sephronia.”

“No, I couldn't.”

“Well, if you really want to further it, you can. Just not so far you ever get lost, that's all.”

 _Have you ever gotten lost?_ He wants to ask, but he feels that would be pushing it. He guesses not, he supposes it depends what Dras meant by lost, and he doesn't want to look too stupid, for this conversation, anyway.

“Can I touch you?” He asks instead. The body-plumage ripples in front of him, a brown and white mosaic settling into place.

“If you must.” Dras says, shifting a little closer.

It's so different, stroking feathers instead of fur, but as a novelty, kind of nice.

 


End file.
